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The Feast at Solhaug : Henrik Ibsen's play Gildet paa Solhaug (1856) inspired Wilhelm Stenhammer's opera Gillet på Solhaug. The world premiere recording is now available via Sterling CD, in a 3 disc set which includes full libretto and background history.

‘Can great music be inspired by the throw of the dice?’ asks Peter Phillips, director of The Tallis Scholars, in his liner notes to the ensemble’s new recording of Josquin’s Missa Di dadi (The Dice Mass). The fifteenth-century artist certainly had an abundant supply of devotional imagery. As one scholar has put it, during this age there was neither ‘an object nor an action, however trivial, that [was] not constantly correlated with Christ or salvation’.

Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto was the composer’s ﬁfteenth opera, and the ninth to a libretto by Giovanni Faustini (1615-1651). First performed at the Teatro Sant’Apollinaire in Venice on 28th November 1651, the opera by might have been sub-titled ‘Gods Behaving Badly’, so debauched are the deities’ dalliances and deviations, so egotistical their deceptions.

Edouard Lalo (1823-92) is best known today for his instrumental works: the
Symphonie espagnole (which is, despite the title, a five-movement
violin concerto), the Symphony in G Minor, and perhaps some movements from his
ballet Namouna, a scintillating work that the young Debussy adored.

It is not often that a major work by a forgotten composer gets rediscovered
and makes an enormously favorable impression on today’s listeners. That has
happened, unexpectedly, with Herculanum, a four-act grand opera by
Félicien David, which in 2014 was recorded for the first time.

This recording, made in the Adrian Boult Hall at the Birmingham Conservatoire of Music in June 2014, is the fourth disc in SOMM’s series of recordings with Paul Spicer and the Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir.

This well-packed disc is a delight and a revelation. Until now, even the
most assiduous record collector had access to only a few of the nearly 100
songs published by Félicien David (1810-76), in recordings by such notable
artists as Huguette Tourangeau, Ursula Mayer-Reinach, Udo Reinemann, and Joan
Sutherland (the last-mentioned singing the duet “Les Hirondelles”
with herself!).

This new release of John Taverner’s virtuosic and florid Missa
Corona spinea (produced by Gimell Records) comes two years after The
Tallis Scholars’ critically esteemed recording of the composer’s
Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas, which topped the UK Specialist Classical
Album Chart for 6 weeks, and with which the ensemble celebrated their
40th anniversary. The recording also includes Taverner’s two
settings of Dum transisset Sabbatum.

Sounds swirl with an urgent emotionality and meandering virtuosity on Jonas Kaufmann’s new Puccini album—the “real one”, according
to Kaufmann, whose works were also released earlier this year on Decca records, allegedly without his approval.

As the editor of Opera magazine, John Allison, notes in his editorial in the June issue, Donizetti fans are currently spoilt for choice, enjoying a ‘Donizetti revival’ with productions of several of the composer’s lesser known works cropping up in houses around the world.

This Winterreise is the final instalment of Matthias Goerne’s series of Schubert lieder for Harmonia Mundi and it brings the Matthias Goerne Schubert Edition, begun in 2008, to a dark, harrowing close.

Now I must add a little about my domestic situation. . . From my first marriage I have three sons and one daughter living. . . . For the second marriage I have one son and two daughters living. . . . The children of my second marriage are still small, the eldest, a boy, being six years old. But they are all born musicians, and I can assure you that I can already form an ensemble both of vocalists and instrumentalists within my family, since my present wife sings a good, clear soprano, and my eldest daughter, too, joins in not badly.

The Kuijken Ensemble presents a compellingly symmetric situation, featuring three brothers—Wieland Kuijken, viola da gamba, Sigiswald Kuijken, violin, and Barthold Kuijken, transverse flute—who, along with harpsichordist Robert Kohnen, echo the familial music making that would have made Bach’s household a harmonious one. Moreover, the Kuijkens have played a leading role in the European early music movement since coming to prominence in the 1970s, both as artists of the highest caliber and teachers of great influence.

Bach’s Musical Offering, BWV 1079, fits well into this family theme, for the genesis of the work derives from a visit Bach paid to the court of Frederick, the Great in 1747, a visit that was surely attractive not only for its cultural opportunities, but also for the chance to see his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, an important figure in the court musical establishment. Upon arrival Bach was presented with a “royal theme” for improvisation; the Musical Offering represents a working out of this theme in many guises: a three- and a six-voice ricercar, numerous canons with intensely sophisticated counterpoint, and a four-movement trio sonata. As a large collection with a decidedly contrapuntal bent, it represents along with works like the Art of Fugue the nature of Bach’s last years, a time in which he takes on large-scale works and brings to them a seemingly inexhaustible contrapuntal technique.

The Kuijken Ensemble’s performance is a masterful one, characterized by an expressive style so elegant and refined that the question of technical demand never even enters one’s mind. The difficulties of Bach’s writing—and there are many challenges here—remain comfortably sub rosa, while expression and affectivity trump all other concerns. And that this is the case transforms the canons from works of potential abstraction to intensely personal statements. When the Kuijken brothers were presented with the York Early Music Festival Life Time Achievement Award, the presenter, Klaus Neumann, quoted Wieland Kuijken in what must surely be the brothers’ signature motto: “I keep fast to the idea that music is an intimate reaction between the score and its interpreter. Soul and heart have the last word.” And that “last word” is clearly their point of departure here.

The trademarks of this elegant playing surface in the details, of course—details like the sensitively contoured motions of phrase and motive, the variety of articulation, or the richness of vowel in the flute sound. Tellingly, the elegance seems equally as at home in the decorative filigree of the sonata as in the expansiveness of the six-voice ricercar.

The DVD records a live concert presented at the Altes Rathaus in Leipzig at the 2000 Leipzig Bach Festival. The nature of the visual content is straight forward with little to distract the viewer from the music. Given the nature of the music and the intensity of the performance, this is a well chosen approach. However, if the DVD is viewed as a visual work itself, not just a visual record of the concert, it might have benefited from a greater exploration of the room and a wider range of perspective. It was also a regrettable coincidence that found Kohnen seated in front of a broadsword mounted on the wall, with the predictable effect that at times it seemed to be growing from out of his head.

The Musical Offering is well represented in numerous recordings. For elegance and richness of expression, this one should go to the top of the list.